| Summary: | Alaska Aviation Makes Big Gains: 17 Companies Operate This Season In Northland. Alaska Aviation Makes Big Gains. 17 Companies Operate This Season in Northland JUNEAU, Alaska, Nov. 28 (AP) Here's how aviation has developed in Alaska: 1929 1935 Number of planes in service. 8 1 Passengers carried 2,171 13,318 Plane miles 33,000 1,685,654 Passenger miles . .273,000 2,100,000 Freight and express carried (pounds) 118,000 1,496,917 Number of airports 18 91 Number of pilots. 40 200 (Estimated present population of Alaska, 70,000.) FAIRBANKS, Alaska, Nov. 28 (AP)—Alaska sourdoughs who once took the musher's trail over frozen tundra to the interior today pack time and space in an aviator's suitcase. This season six commercial and eleven private companies operated scheduled passenger flights between all important cities in the territory. The commercial air-mesh in which Alaska's once elusive space is caught extends from Barrow on the Arctic ocean, southwest to Nome on the Bering sea, southeast to Ketchikan on the Pacific and out over the 1200-mile Aleutian island chain. Long Trip Shortened. It is 55 days from Fairbanks to Nome via dog team. Today an airplane makes it in four hours. Plane service is being advertised as an attraction to hunters looking for fast travel and big game. The airplane also has found favor among miners who want rapid and comparatively safe means of transportation. Recently a miner ordered shoes for his children. He telegraphed the size and a plane from the coast flew them to him in the interior. Charles Goldstein, Alaskan fur trader, has covered over 5000 miles by plane this season over the interior gathering furs for shipments to the United States. Next month a score of school teachers plan to go "outside" by plane to spend the Christmas holiday; others plan to travel to various parts of Alaska by air. Dog Team Replaced A sample time table of flights Juneau to Fairbanks, 475 miles, $100. Time, 4% hours. Fairbanks to Nome, 400 miles, $100. Time, 4 hours. Whitehorse to Juneau, 150 miles, $25. Time, 1% hours. Commercial aviation in the territory was inaugurated about 14 years ago with an experimental |mail contract between Fairbanks and McGraft, a distance of 300 miles. At that time mail was being transported by dog team and was 17 days in transit. The plane makes it in about three hours. Alaska's aviation has followed the pattern of high romance and is definitely the outgrowth of the flight of American army aviators who flew from New York to Nome in 1927. Airplanes are to Alaska as taxis are to New York.
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